The Voice of the People | Page 4

upon his arm.
"What is it?" he asked absently. "Ah, it is you? Yes, let me see. Why!
you've got Sir Henry Maine!"
The boy was holding the book in both hands. As the judge laughed he
flushed nervously and turned towards the door.
The judge leaned back in his chair, watching the small figure cross the
room and disappear into the hall. He saw the tracks of dust which the

boy's feet left upon the smooth, bare floor, but he was not thinking of
them. Then, as the child went out upon the porch, he started up.
"Nicholas!" he called, "don't turn down the leaves!"

II
A facetious stranger once remarked that Kingsborough dozed through
the present to dream of the past and found the future a nightmare. Had
he been other than a stranger, he would, perhaps, have added that
Kingsborough's proudest boast was that she had been and was not--a
distinction giving her preëminence over certain cities whose charters
were not received from royal grants--cities priding themselves not only
upon a multiplicity of streets, but upon the more plebeian fact that the
feet of their young men followed the offending thoroughfares to the
undignified music of the march of progress.
But, whatever might be said of places that shall be nameless, it was
otherwise with Kingsborough. Kingsborough was the same yesterday,
to-day, and forever. She who had feasted royal governors, staked and
lost upon Colonial races, and exploded like an ignited powder-horn in
the cause of American independence, was still superbly conscious of
the honours which had been hers. Her governors were no longer royal,
nor did she feast them; her races were run by fleet-footed coloured
urchins on the court-house green; her powder-magazine had evolved
through differentiation from a stable into a church; but Kingsborough
clung to her amiable habits. Travellers still arrived at the landing stage
some several miles distant and were driven over all but impassable
roads to the town. The eastern wall of the court-house still bore the sign
"England Street," though the street had vanished beneath encroaching
buttercups, and the implied loyalty had been found wanting.
Kingsborough juries still sat in their original semicircle, with their
backs to the judge and their faces, presumably, to the law;
Kingsborough farmers still marketed their small truck in the street
called after the Duke of Gloucester; and Kingsborough cows still
roamed at will over the vaults in the churchyard. In time trivial changes

would come to pass. Tourists would arrive with the railroad; the
powder-magazine would turn from a church into a museum; gardens
would decay and ancient elms would fall, but the farmers and the cows
would not be missed from their accustomed haunts. On the hospitable
thresholds of "general" stores battle-scarred veterans of the war
between the States dealt in victorious reminiscences of vanquishment.
They had fought well, they had fallen silently, and they had risen
without bitterness. For the people of Kingsborough had opened their
doors to wounded foes while the battle raged through their streets,
succouring while they resisted. They lived easily and they died hard,
but when death came they met it, not in grim Puritanism, but with a
laugh upon the lips. They made a joy of life while it was possible, and
when that ceased to be, they did the next best thing and made a friend
of death. Long ago theirs had been the first part in Virginia, and, as
they still believed, theirs had been also the centre of all things. Now the
high places were laid low, and the greatness had passed as a trumpet
that is blown. Kingsborough persisted still, but it persisted evasively,
hovering, as it were, upon the outskirts of modern advancement. And
the outside world took note only when it made tours to historic
strongholds, or sent those of itself that were adjudged insane to the
hospitable shelter of the asylum upon the hill.
It was afternoon, and Kingsborough was asleep.
Along the verdurous, gray lanes the houses seemed abandoned,
shuttered, filled with shade. From the court-house green came the
chime of cow-bells rising and falling in slow waves of sound. A spotted
calf stood bleating in the crooked footpath, which traversed diagonally
the waste of buttercups like a white seam in a cloth of gold. Against the
arching sky rose the bell-tower of the grim old church, where the
sparrows twittered in the melancholy gables and the startled face of the
stationary clock stared blankly above the ivied walls. Farther away, at
the end of a wavering lane, slanted the shadow of the insane asylum.
Across the green the houses were set in surrounding gardens like cards
in bouquets of mixed blossoms. They were of frame for the most part,
with shingled roofs and small, square windows hidden beneath

climbing roses. On